Players were annoyed by the repetitive Zadornov Search missions in Peace Walker, especially as they had to play through Extra Ops just to unlock them and advance the plot. Meanwhile, The Phantom Pain’s “Chapter 2: Race” is a kind of “epilogue” chapter, similar to Peace Walker’s “Chapter 5: Outer Heaven,” where players complete side-missions while being drip-fed story progress. Storywise, The Phantom Pain’s “Chapter 1: Revenge” is the equivalent of Chapters 1 through 4 of Peace Walker, where the main plot unfolds and Snake defeats the main villain. To understand the structure of Chapter 2 of The Phantom Pain, it’s best to compare it to the previous “Tactical Espionage Operations” Metal Gear game: Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. Even if trailers show scenes that would ultimately be cut from the final film, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re “incomplete.” Exhibit C: “Chapter 2: Race” featured numerous repeated missions, suggesting that corners were cut to artificially lengthen the game. Trailers-especially Kojima’s trailers-aren’t necessarily made to literally show what’s in the final work, they’re made to show the style, tone, and premise to a potential audience. The animation of Venom Snake falling to his knees and yelling into the sky, from the E3 2014 trailer, seems to have been used for “Episode 43: Shining Lights, Even in Death.” Likewise, depending on the time of day, the scene of child soldiers being trained to fire weapons plays out in-game during “Episode 13: Pitch Dark.” Rather than a Camp Omega POW, it is Silent Basilisk, the mute Hamid fighter from “Episode 6: Where Do The Bees Sleep?” who is tortured in Afghanistan, and can later be killed by Soviet gunfire if the player doesn’t intervene. However, the animations from the trailer are actually in the final game.
Kojima mentioned plans for The Phantom Pain to include playable missions set in Camp Omega for those who have played Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, but this seems to have been another cut feature. The Red Band version of The Phantom Pain’s E3 2013 trailer got fans excited for a return to Camp Omega, only to later be disappointed when these scenes were seemingly not in the final game. Most infamously, Sons of Liberty’s E3 2001 trailer showed Solid Snake in the place of Raiden in various scenes. Ninja Raiden’s debut at the end of Guns of the Patriots’ E3 2006 trailer took place in the Middle East, but played out like it did in the South America portion of the final game. Other times the same animations are used but play out in a different location, often with different character models. The E3 2006 trailer for Guns of the Patriots featured numerous unused scenes, such as Otacon crying in the helicopter, Liquid Ocelot making a reference to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, or Old Snake putting a gun to his mouth in some random place in the Middle East. The E3 2000 trailer for Sons of Liberty depicts Snake escaping the sinking Tanker as a playable segment.
Nearly every Metal Gear game has trailers that use scenes absent from the final game. Exhibit B: There are scenes shown in trailers that are absent in the final game. It just wasn’t the ending many fans wanted. Unlike Halo 2, however, The Phantom Pain ended as Kojima intended.
Halo 2 infamously ended on a cliffhanger, not due to artistic reasons, but because Bungie ran out of time and couldn’t wrap up the story with a final level, leaving players to wait three years and buy a new console to “finish the fight.” Beta versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 featured several zones not seen in the final game, though one of them reappeared as an Easter egg in the mobile version remaster. If the mere existence of cut content is proof of The Phantom Pain being unfinished, then practically every game is unfinished by that standard. Sons of Liberty was planned to have a boss dubbed “Old Boy.” The End in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater ended up reusing ideas from the cut character, but that hardly means Sons of Liberty was an unfinished game by this character’s omission.Īs for the playable Battle Gear, we actually have a reason for why it was cut-Kojima was concerned that it threw off the game’s balance. The original Metal Gear Solid was going to feature a character called “El Mariachi” as part of the Codec cast. “Third Sun,” Act 3 of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, was originally going to feature Snake escorting an injured Big Mama through the sewers.Īs cool as seeing an older, traumatized Chico would’ve been, he’s not the first character to go unused in a Metal Gear game.
The Grand Game Plan for Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty outlined many ideas and features that wouldn’t be in the final game. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake was originally going to have a mass-production Metal Gear model that was cut due to ROM-size limitations. From dreaming of monster hunting to becoming a monster.Ī certain amount of cut content is to be expected during the development of any game.